_________________"Democracy is like sausage, you want it, but you don't want to know how it is made". [John Godfrey Saxe]Ronald Coase, Nobel Economic Sciences, said in 1991 “If we torture the data long enough, it will confess.”"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild"To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated": Elon Musk

As recently as 2013, Russia controlled about half of the global commercial launch industry with its fleet of rockets, including the Proton boosters. But technical problems with the Proton, as well as competition from SpaceX and other players, has substantially eroded the Russian share. This year, it may only have about 10 percent of the commercial satellite launch market, compared to as much as 50 percent for SpaceX.

Quote:

What seems most remarkable about Rogozin's comment is that, for the first time publicly, the world's most storied launch provider appears to be ceding the commercial launch market to other providers—most notably a rocket company that didn't exist until 2002, and flew its first orbital rocket less than a decade ago.

The Russians even with a falling Rouble can't compete with SpaceX, they really should have been nicer to Musk all those years ago

Well, to make oil you need to have a long period of carbon capture and storage by massive biological activity like the Carboniferous period on earth which lasted 60 million years. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

aka load and loads and loads and loads of trees. Did I say loads? I mean like shit loads of trees.

I don't think you need trees for oil formation, its more algae and plankton that are important

Terra Incognita wrote:

Then you need to bury that carbon using tectonic activity so that all that carbon gets locked underground for a few 10's or 100's of millions of years and over time it turns into coal and oil.

Mars is solid and geologically dead. It has no tectonic activity so it couldn't have buried any trees on the surface underground. And there is no, zero, nada, zilch evidence that it has had anything other than a few bugs ever on its surface. So no trees. No coal, No Oil.

Mars is not geologically active today but its very clear that is was in the past, Olympus Mons is the largest Volcano in the Solar system, its so large Galileo might have been able to see it, we also know that Mars had oceans and an atmosphere, so all the building blocks for oil were once present, therefore IMO its possible that Mars could have oil deposits

And thats before we start to wonder about Titan

Terra Incognita wrote:

There is no oil on Mars. If you want to transport it has to be electric

Even if Earth gets hit by a large asteroid or somebody lets off all the nukes it'll still be more habitable than Mars.

It's not quite about being emperor of your own planet it is about ensuring the survival of our species and he's doing it by getting it to pay for its self by creating a new massive off world economy.

Can earth based organisms successfully procreate and raise healthy off-spring on a planet with 38% of the gravity of earth? What effect will the lack of Sun exposure have on Martian Humans? There has been some science done on mammal babies in space and then brought back to Earth but none on long-term off-Earth living.

_________________No tool is omnicompetent. There is no such thing as a master-key that will unlock all doors.--Arnold Toynbee

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.--Epictetus

Even if Earth gets hit by a large asteroid or somebody lets off all the nukes it'll still be more habitable than Mars.

It's not quite about being emperor of your own planet it is about ensuring the survival of our species and he's doing it by getting it to pay for its self by creating a new massive off world economy.

Can earth based organisms successfully procreate and raise healthy off-spring on a planet with 38% of the gravity of earth? What effect will the lack of Sun exposure have on Martian Humans? There has been some science done on mammal babies in space and then brought back to Earth but none on long-term off-Earth living.

The short answer is probably yes.

There is a huge difference between having no gravity and having 40% gravity.

The longer answer is that they will probably adapt well to Mars but mammals born and raised on Mars would find it much harder to go back to Earth.

_________________"Perfect is the enemy of the good" Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

We can make our own gravity in space with centrifuges more easily than on the surface of Mars. Personally I don't see the point in populating Mars. It is far less hospitable than any conceivable future Earth. In the very long run the same events threaten both Earth and Mars. And in the meantime the few singular threats to Earth such as large asteroid impacts can easily be dealt with. If we're capable of colonising another planet we should easily be able to nudge a few space rocks out of the way.

_________________"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" – Niels Bohr

We can make our own gravity in space with centrifuges more easily than on the surface of Mars. Personally I don't see the point in populating Mars. It is far less hospitable than any conceivable future Earth. In the very long run the same events threaten both Earth and Mars. And in the meantime the few singular threats to Earth such as large asteroid impacts can easily be dealt with. If we're capable of colonising another planet we should easily be able to nudge a few space rocks out of the way.

Yep spinning space stations would get over gravity but who would want to spend the rest of their lives on a spinning tube, when there is Earth with all it's beauty.

Even if it was possible to procreate on Mars would it be right to imprison future children born there to the planet. The planet is dead and hostile to life. You'd be consigning them to a prison planet that at any moment could kill them.

_________________No tool is omnicompetent. There is no such thing as a master-key that will unlock all doors.--Arnold Toynbee

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.--Epictetus

We can make our own gravity in space with centrifuges more easily than on the surface of Mars. Personally I don't see the point in populating Mars. It is far less hospitable than any conceivable future Earth. In the very long run the same events threaten both Earth and Mars. And in the meantime the few singular threats to Earth such as large asteroid impacts can easily be dealt with. If we're capable of colonising another planet we should easily be able to nudge a few space rocks out of the way.

Yep spinning space stations would get over gravity but who would want to spend the rest of their lives on a spinning tube, when there is Earth with all it's beauty.

Even if it was possible to procreate on Mars would it be right to imprison future children born there to the planet. The planet is dead and hostile to life. You'd be consigning them to a prison planet that at any moment could kill them.

We had this debate at the start of the thread, you might be right but it makes little difference SpaceX are working on sending people to Mars